This application relates generally to the field of cellular-related quality of service. More specifically, the disclosure provided herein relates to reducing bandwidth by way of content forwarding.
Cellular-related quality of service (“QoS”) issues are a significant source of frustration for service providers as well as their customers. Common QoS issues include bandwidth limitations, jitter, delay and latency, packet loss, and interference. QoS issues may result in a number of problems for customers, potentially causing customers to change service providers. In one example, a customer may experience a “dropped call,” in which a phone call unexpectedly ends. In another example, a customer may experience a slow data transfer rate that is not suitable for transferring high-bandwidth content, such as video and music. QoS problems may result in unacceptable quality of service, causing customer dissatisfaction ranging from annoyance to anger.
As cellular devices become more pervasive, multiple cellular devices may receive the same or similar content at about the same time or within a relatively narrow time frame. For example, a first cellular device may request a video clip, and five minutes later, a second cellular device may request the same video clip. In a conventional cellular network, the cellular tower transmits one copy of the video clip to the first cellular device and another copy of the video clip to the second cellular device. Each transmission from the cellular tower to the first cellular device and the second cellular device requires a certain amount of bandwidth. By transmitting multiple copies of the same content item, the cellular tower may be wasting bandwidth. The excess bandwidth being utilized may affect, among other things, overall quality of service across the cellular network by reducing the available bandwidth for other cellular devices on the cellular network.